dad's plane, mom's plane

[usscout]

Today I had the honor of making a flyover of the travaling Vietnam Memorial Wall on display from May 21 thru May 25, at our towns VFW, my passenger with me flew in WW II in B-24's, he is a long time friend and has many stories that he shares when asked, he never shares them unless asked and even then its hard to get him to talking about all that happened. Last year he brought me lots of documents of his from his tour of duty. There are many pitchures of his friends and of aircraft nose art that he personal took of the planes that he flew in and of planes he was near, none of the nose art have I ever seen except in his pics., also included were pics. of their bombing runs in Japan. I scaned all the pics. & documents then returned them to him. The aircraft I own is an Boeing PT-27 built Feb. 10, 1942. I will make another flyover the wall on Sunday at 2:00 PM. I hope to ask another friend of mine to fly with me from another town that flew B-17's doing daylight bombing in Germany, he had five B-17's that were either shot down or he had to bail out of. These guys do not see themselves as heros, and when you tell them that them are heros, they say that they were just doing there job! Each time I climb into the cockpit of my plane I feel unworthey of owning it knowing that it had trained so many young pilot, many of which died, that went to war and fought with honor so that people like me and all of you can live in a free country. I now have 5 grandsons ages 16 years through 4 months, the older ones have flown with me every chance they get and are on there way to be pilots. I am trying to teach them to respect all thoses that have made our country free & to stand against any that try to take our freedom away!

Usscout